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Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, sits in the centre of the country on a flat plateau in the West African Sahel, deep in the interior far from any sea, at approximately 12.36°N, 1.54°W. It has a hot semi-arid climate (Köppen BSh) on the edge of the Sahara, with intense year-round heat and a single short rainy season, the year sharply divided between a long dry season and a brief wet one governed by the West African monsoon.
The hottest period comes before the rains, around March to May, when highs regularly reach 40–42°C under a relentless sun. The rainy season then arrives with the monsoon from around June to September, bringing warm temperatures near 32–34°C, higher humidity and heavy, often violent thunderstorms; August is the wettest month. Even in the rains, the heat remains considerable, and dry spells punctuate the downpours.
The cooler dry season, from November to February, is the most comfortable time, with warm, sunny days around 33–35°C but pleasantly cooler nights that can drop to around 16–18°C. Its defining feature is the Harmattan, a dry, dusty wind blowing off the Sahara that hazes the sky, lowers humidity and can make the air thick with fine sand, especially from December to February.
Ouagadougou is dry, receiving only around 750–800 mm of rain a year, almost all of it concentrated in the short rainy season from June to September, with a strong peak in August; from November to April it is effectively rainless. The rains arrive as intense, sometimes destructive thunderstorms that can cause flash flooding on the flat terrain. Live rainfall, humidity, and pressure readings for the city are shown in the panels above.
Ouagadougou's weather is governed by the seasonal tug-of-war between the moist monsoon and the dry Sahara: for much of the year the Harmattan wind blows dust down from the desert, hazing the sky and drying the air, before the monsoon briefly greens the Sahel with violent summer storms. The pre-monsoon months are among the hottest anywhere, with the shade offering little relief from the intense Sahelian sun.
To follow any single measurement in Ouagadougou more closely, use our live instruments: the online barometer for atmospheric pressure, the thermometer for temperature, the hygrometer for humidity, the anemometer for wind speed, the wind vane for wind direction, and the rain gauge for rainfall.